Sunday, 18 July 2010

When I first noticed the Lilac Beauty on the garage wall I thought it was a freshly emerged Early Thorn drying it's wings but luckily I took a couple of photos and when I was going through the photos I realised what it was.

Friday, 16 July 2010

I've had a madly busy week so the blog has been neglected but hopefully things will calm down a bit now so I can attempt to keep up to date with any new findings. I've only had chance to trap on a couple of nights but I did get a few NFY species and one micro which is NFG but I'm yet to ID it. These few take me to over 200 species for my garden so far this year so hopefully I could get to 250+ before the year is out.

Friday, 9 July 2010

My last night in Lincolnshire and it was another warm one, numbers wise it was the best night of the 3 with more species turning up as well as another Privet Hawk which was much bigger than the one I got on the first night. Other notable arrivals were Figure Of Eighty, White Spot, Sandy Carpet, Brown Rustic, Scallop Shell and a beautiful female Ghost which was kind enough to lay some eggs in her pot.
The trap was out from 10pm till 3am, 17c all night

A much warmer night tonight which meant a lot of Crane flies and I mean a lot...hundreds of the little buggers but they didn't seem to deter the moths so there were hundreds of them again too, a lot of Carpet moths showed up tonight and more micros even though it was fairly windy.
The trap was out from 10:15pm till 3am and the temperature stayed at around 16c

I've just got back from a 3 day camping trip to a site in Lincolnshire which turned out to be a moth trapping paradise!, we stayed at West End Farm(http://www.westendfarm.co.uk/) which is half way between Louth and Mablethorpe. Chris, the site owner has tried to retain as many wildlife habitat areas within the site as possible by fencing off sections of woodland and placing the camping pitches between them to avoid any encroachement. This has worked wonderfully and helps to make the site feel like you're camping in the woods but with the added bonus of a toilet/shower block and electric hook up. My wife(Jane) found the site on the net and rang Chris to book us in, during the conversation Jane explained about my interest in moth trapping and Chris was as curious as me to find out which moths inhabit the area. I must admit I wasn't expecting to get a lot of moths and on the first night the trap had been on for 40 minutes with only a few Small Fan Footed Wave and half a dozen Snout showing up but as the night went on more and more moths started to arrive and by 3am I had over 300 moths in and around the trap with everything from Light Grey Tortrix to Privet Hawk!.
The trap was on from 10pm till 3am, temperature went from 14c down to 12c.